"Anything heard to my discredit should be carefully received. Believe the best of me as long as you can. It will never be necessary, Alice, for any one to tell you I am unworthy; when that day comes you will know it first from me. And if I ever am unworthy, it will not be because I willed to be--only because through my baseness I never could know what it means to be worthy of a woman far above me."
She reached out her hand for her sunshade but he refused to give it back. She tried to rise; he laid his hand on her arm. "A moment! It was about me, was it?" he continued. "Did you receive it cautiously? Put me in your position. How do you think one would fare who came to me with anything to your discredit? Think of it, Alice--how do you think one would fare--look at me."
She looked up only for an instant and as if in protest. But in spite of herself something in her own eyes of confidence in him, some tribute to his honesty, stood revealed, and inspired him with a new courage.
"You say what you hear of me does not concern you. Anything you hear of me does concern you vitally." His intensity frightened her, and thinking to escape him, she still sat motionless.
"Everything I do, important or trivial, has its relation to you. Do you believe me? Alice, you must believe me. You do believe me. How can you say that anything you hear of me does not concern you? It concerns you above every living person. It concerns your happiness----"
"Such wildness--such extravagance!" she exclaimed trying to control her fear.
"I tell you I am neither wild nor extravagant. Our happiness, our very lives are bound up together. It isn't that I say to you, you are mine--I am yours."
The furious beating of her heart would not be stilled. "How can you say such things!"
"I say them because I can't escape your influence in my life. I only want to come up to where you are--not to drag you down to where I am--to where I have been condemned to be from the cradle. If what you hear of me conflicts with what I say to you, believe nothing of what you hear." His words fell like blows. "If I could show you my very heart I could not be more open. It is you who are everything to me--you alone."
Breathless and rigid she looked away. Hardly breathing himself, Kimberly watched her. Her lip quivered. "Oh, my heart!" he murmured. But in the words she heard an incredible tenderness. It moved her where intensity had failed. It stilled the final pangs of revolt at his words. She drifted for an instant in a dream. New and trembling thoughts woke in a reluctant dawn and glowed in her heart like faint, far streamers of a new day.